According to a new report in Haaretz by Nir Hasson, as the death toll in Gaza reaches 40,000, it's time to face facts: "the numbers show" that the Gaza war is "one of the bloodiest in the 21st Century."

For many who hear this claim, its veracity will seem obvious. For nearly a year, the world has been consumed by this war. There must be a reason. Surely the absolute numbers justify the riots, the self-immolations, and the accusations of that most vile crime against humanity - genocide.

But reading the report, one sees how quickly it disproves its own claims. Let's look at the numbers, cited by Hasson himself:

In Syria, 405,000 dead.

In Iraq, 210,000 dead.

In Yugoslavia, 100,000 dead.

In Ukraine, 172,000 dead.

All of those numbers appear to be much higher than 40,000, so how is Haaretz claiming that this is one of the deadliest conflicts of the century? Well, they don't go by absolute numbers. Instead, they go by pace and by percentage of population.

40,000 is 2% of Gaza's population, and this number of fatalities has occurred in less than a year.

The Syrian war also claimed the lives of 2% of the population, but took 13 years.

The Iraq war claimed the lives of 1% of the population, but took 20 years.

The Ukraine war has only claimed the lives of .45% of the population, in 2.5 years.

This is not usually how we evaluate the size of a war. But it is how we evaluate the size of this war. In December, the Washington Post called the war "one of this century's most destructive," again citing pace rather than absolute numbers. It is as if these reporters are starting with the assumption that the Gaza war is the worst in recent history, and then working backwards to find out how.

But beyond this dishonest analysis, it's unclear what exactly they are implying. Is a war that lasts decades better than one that lasts a year? Is it less "bloody" or "destructive"?

After all, everyone knows that the war in Gaza won't last for two decades like America's wars. Israel is already winding down in Gaza, and while Netanyahu and Gallant may bicker over the exact nature of the end, we all know that it's going to end, and that the lion's share of the IDF's mission in Gaza is done. As for percentage, where did we get 2%?

40,000 is 2% of Gaza's population, but there are also millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and as far as I know, every Palestinian from Gaza and the West Bank considers themselves to be a single people.

So yes, 2% of the residents of the region held by Hamas have died in this war. In fact, nearly half of them were Hamas themselves. But it's not true that 2% of the Palestinian population has died. Far from it.

If this is how people want to analyze this war, so be it, but let's be fair and let both sides use the same metrics. For instance, on October 7th, around 70,000 people lived in the region of Israel known as the Gaza Envelope. By nightfall, 1.7% of them had been slain by merciless invaders.

None of this is to say that 40,000 is a small number. Indeed, reporters ought to be curious about why this number is as high as it is, considering Israel's well-documented efforts to minimize civilian casualties.

There are a number of reasons. For one, generally, when there is a war, people are allowed to flee to safer areas. Palestinians are not. The Egyptians have sealed their border with little to no international scrutiny or condemnation. As for "safe zones" within Gaza, Hamas has a habit of taking them over and turning them into battlefields.

When Mohammad Deif was killed by an Israeli strike, many were outraged that the strike was in a so-called "safe zone." They should have been outraged that Hamas' second-in-command was in a "safe zone" to begin with when he knew that his presence rendered the area a legitimate military target.

There are other ways in which Hamas guarantees civilian deaths. For instance, not wearing uniforms so as to confuse between the civilian population and combatants; or using hospitals as bases; or UN buildings, or hiding Israeli hostages in dense urban areas. People would rather blame Israel. For instance, in January, the Washington Post called the displacement of Gazans "the largest displacement in the region since 1948."

But it's not. Not even close. 1.9 million people live in Gaza. 13 million were displaced by the Syrian civil war. 4 million in Yemen. 9 million in Iraq. So why claim that this is the largest displacement? And why say "since 1948"? Simple: to make it seem like the existence of Israel is the problem. None of this is to minimize the devastating tragedies caused by this war, or the horrifying situation in the Gaza strip.

Yesterday, I saw a gut wrenching video of a Palestinian man whose wife and newborn twins had died in an Israeli airstrike. There is no quantifying such grief and I pray, for his sake and for others like him, that this war ends speedily with a deal that brings the hostages home.

But the world is insisting that Israel is bloodthirsty - that it is doing something other than what any country would do after suffering the kind of invasion that Israel suffered on October 7th.

This isn't true, and despite what Haaretz says, it's not "what the numbers show."

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The Marvel character Sabra is what early Zionists called "the new Jew." Raised on a Kibbutz, enlisted by the Mossad, she is emancipated, strong, and unashamed.

Unlike many other female superheroes, she doesn't seem designed for the male gaze. Her uniform—a blue & white affair in the style of the Israeli flag—covers her broad, muscular form from head to toe. Atop her head is an afro (or Jew-fro) of thick, dark Israelite curls. Her cape is a fur mantle rather than a flapping piece of fabric. It is heavy and lends heaviness to its wearer. She is not one to be trifled with.

One wonders what this proud, liberated "new Jew" would think of the upcoming Captain America movie, in which the character of Sabra has been stripped of nearly everything—-her Israeli identity, her hair, and her over-the-top flag ensemble.

Sabra is, of course, still Jewish. To be Jewish is permissible, so long as one atones for the sins of the Zionist entity. One can do this in a number of ways. One can, like director Jonathan Glazer, make speeches claiming that Israel has hijacked Judaism. One can, like anti-Zionist rabbi May Ye, do teshuvah for the "blood on one's hands" that comes with being Jewish. One can carry a sign that says "Not In My Name." One can join Jewish Voice for Peace.

But Israeli Jews aren't in the habit of apologizing for their existence and calling for the destruction of their own homeland, and so Sabra's atonement had to be the erasure of her Israeliness altogether.

It is a cliche these days to say that "representation matters," but to a certain extent, it's true. As a gay kid who loved comic books, a cameo appearance of a gay character in Green Lantern was huge for me. He wasn't the hero. He wasn't even a main character. He was just Green Lantern's assistant at work. Still, the mere fact that a character like me warranted a place in Green Lantern's universe lifted up something inside of me that had been cast down.

Jews right now are similarly cast down. We are witnessing a wave of antisemitism the likes of which we have only read about in history books. We have seen Jewish villages ransacked and burned. We have seen Jewish partygoers slaughtered by marauding terrorists. And we have seen our neighbors cheer the carnage and condemn the victims.

In this age of supervillains, Jews could have really used a hero. Unfortunately, that hero won't be Sabra, but that doesn't mean we have nobody to look up to.

One of the purposes of Zionism was to lift up a generation of Jews like Sabra - Jews who are not victims in need of saving, but heroes capable of saving themselves and others.

In this respect, Zionism has been a resounding success. I never cease being amazed by the strength, goodness and commitment of ordinary Israelis who have leapt into action since October 7th to serve in the IDF, to volunteer, and to advocate for the hostages.

Considering this, we shouldn't spend too much time mourning Marvel's cowardly revisionism. We don't need Sabra. We have enough real heroes to get us through.

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A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a headline that read, "Blaming Hamas for Gazans' Suffering, Many Israelis Feel Little Sympathy."

Shortly after, New York Magazine ran an essay by Ayelet Waldman, which claimed that "for the majority of Jewish Israelis, the only grief they can feel is their own, the only dead worth mourning are their own."

The "unsympathetic Israeli" has become a trope in its own right, but in reality, many Israelis do care about the plight of civilian Palestinians in Gaza. There are peace activists, people who work for NGOs and human rights lawyers who have made this the center of their lives and politics. There are Israelis protesting every week to end the war, not just because they want the hostages to come home, but also because they want safety for people on both sides of the conflict.

If there are fewer such people in Israel today than there were on October 6th, it's because a number of them - like peace activist Vivian Silver - were slaughtered by Hamas militants on October 7th. Others, like Naama Levy, also a peace activist, were kidnapped. In the video of her capture, we can hear her begging for mercy, pleading "I have friends in Palestine." Others were simply disillusioned, like Batia Holin of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, who - after partnering with a Gazan man on an art exhibit designed to foster partnership and dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians - discovered that he had participated in the Hamas invasion.

To be fair, there are also Israelis who don't feel sympathy for the Palestinians. With enemies in both the north and south, with hostages still trapped in Gaza, with memories of Hamas barbarity still painfully and traumatically fresh, most Israelis are primarily concerned with their own families, their own people, their own fear, and their own grief.

This doesn't make them bad people. It simply means that they are human.

We might ask who Israel is being compared to here. Is there some other people that displays a greater amount of sympathy towards its enemies in wartime, compared to whom Israelis seem uncaring?

Certainly not Americans, who were mostly apathetic and, in many cases, completely unaware during America's twenty-odd years of war in the Middle East. Certainly not Palestinians, who danced in the streets on October 7th. As is usually the case, this absurd standard seems to be applied exclusively to Israel.

Someone once said that Israel is the only country in the world expected to be a Christian nation. In the past nine months, Israel has been told to "turn the other cheek" and "love thy enemy." Israelis are right to reject this hypocritical advice. With Iranian proxy armies coming at us from all sides, we have no more cheeks to turn.

If people can't understand that, perhaps it is because they don't know what it's like to live in a country threatened with destruction, to witness whole towns massacred by invaders, or to have one's border pushed back by rocket fire.

It wouldn't kill them to have a little sympathy.

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